AIMEE BLUME: P'tit Basque cheese

Aimee Blume / Special to scripps newspapers P’tit Basque cheese is made in the Pyrenees Mountains of southern France. It is a sheep cheese made only since 1997 but with ancient roots.

Aimee Blume / Special to The Cou

Copyright 2014 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

By Aimee Blume / Special to Scripps newspapers

The Pyrenees mountains mark the border between southern France and northern Spain stretched between the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. On the Atlantic end of the range is the Pays Basque, or Basque Country, where the Basque peoples, who are neither French nor Spanish, have lived and farmed for thousands of years.

The Pyrenees, despite not being particularly tall or spiky, are very rugged, with steep and deep valleys and rushing rivers. They have historically formed an impenetrable barrier between Spain and France, and the Basque people who live within them have retained their own culture, language and ways of cooking into modern times.

This includes the making of their unpasteurized sheeps’ milk cheeses that are known by the French word Brebis, or “sheep,” throughout the rest of the world.

Steven Jenkins, in his Cheese Primer, describes them as “absolutely among the most delicious in the world.” He reports the Basques insist their cheeses have been made the same way for 4,000 years and has no problem agreeing with this.

Brebis cheeses have fun names such as Idiazabal, Etorki and Ossau-Iraty. Locally, The Wine Vault carries P’tit Basque, a small Brebis-type cheese made with pasteurized milk in the Basque Country.

P’tit Basque is a new cheese, first made in 1997, using centuries old techniques. As suggested by the name, it is a small cheese, weighing only a couple of pounds, and, according to manufacturer Istara, is modeled on the smaller cheeses shepherds would make with leftover curds after the last of the large Brebis wheels were filled. As in other places, such as the Swiss and French Alps, these small cheeses are meant to be eaten fairly quickly by the shepherds themselves, not aged to form a rock-hard rind and transported long distances. P’tit Basque is aged for 70 days, half as long as the larger cheeses.

Jenkins’ Cheese Primer was published in 1995, two years before P’tit Basque was manufactured. Frankly, he probably wouldn’t like it as much as the traditional Brebis cheeses mostly because it is made with pasteurized milk and is aged for less time, resulting in a softer and less-pungent cheese. But that doesn’t mean we can’t like it just as much or more. If you enjoy Manchego, Iberico, Pecorino or Caciotta cheeses, this is a wonderful one to try. It is a pretty cheese too with a buff-brown rind marked with a basket-weave design similar to that found on Manchego.

In the Basque Country, cheeses aren’t used much for cooking but eaten on their own with fruit, cured meats, pickled vegetables and olives. Black cherry preserves are particularly enjoyed with cheese. Pair P’tit Basque with rich Spanish red wines or a cabernet.

Black Cherry Preserves (To

eat with P’tit Basque Cheese)

INGREDIENTS

1 pound sweet black cherries, such as Bing, stemmed and pitted

½ cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar

½ tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

DIRECTIONS

1 Place four ceramic plates in the freezer. In a medium stockpot, combine the cherries, sugar and lemon juice; place over medium-high heat, cook, stirring frequently, until the sugar has dissolved, 3-5 minutes.

2 Bring the mixture to a full boil and cook, stirring frequently, for 10 minutes. Place a candy thermometer in the mixture and cook, stirring frequently, until temperature registers 220 degrees, about 20-30 minutes. While cooking, skim any foam that floats to the surface.

3 With the temperature at 220 degrees, perform a gel test — remove one of the plates from the freezer and place a spoonful of jam on it. Return the plate to the freezer and wait 1 minute. Remove plate from freezer and gently nudge the edge of the jam with one finger. If the jam is ready, it will wrinkle slightly when pushed. If it is not ready, it will be too thin to wrinkle. If the jam does not wrinkle on the first attempt, cook 2-3 minutes more and repeat the gel test.

4 Cool completely before serving with salty sheeps’ milk cheese.

Source: Adapted from Martha Stewart

Copyright 2014 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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